Build your own engine

GM have come up with a winner. If you're in the market for a 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1, they're now offering a unique owner experience; you can help assemble your vehicle's own engine yourself. They call it their Build Your Own Engine program, and it'll set you back a lofty $5,800 for the priveledge. Interesting, because - isn't that their job? I mean when you pay for a new vehicle, you're paying for all of it. Surely if you're getting to do some of their work for them, they ought to discount the price of the car?
The program is possible because the engines for those two models are hand-assembled rather than put together by robots. This means you can get down and dirty with their technicians and get hands on with the engine that will power your own car. You even get a special nameplate.

There is an aspect of this story that hasn't been discussed yet though. Two actually. First - the warranty. If anything goes wrong with the engine, will GM cover it or will they simply say "well you built it - not our problem"?

And second - resale value. Would you buy a Corvette with an engine built by the previous owner? Didn't think so.

Via insideline.com

When buying a new car, use all the tools available to you

It sounds obvious but so many people will still go to a car dealer and pay what the dealer asks for their new vehicle. It doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of tools around nowadays to help you strike a deal. In America for example, we have the Consumer Reports new car report. (Consumer Reports is like Which? in England). For $14 you can buy a pricing report that breaks down the actual cost of the car to the dealer. Why is this important? Well once you're armed with that information, 9 times out of 10 you can drive the dealer way down on price. I recently bought a new VW Tiguan (nice car by the way) and using a pricing report I was able to get $2100 off the sticker price. How? The pricing report will show you what the dealer actually paid to get the vehicle on his lot. Not the "invoice" price they'll readily show you - that doesn't include incentives and the manufacturer holdback. (When a dealer shows you an invoice and tells you he's making no money by offering you invoice price, he's lying.) The report also shows you the cost to the dealer of any options as well as the cost to you - again so you can see if the markup is correct or not.

My new VW for example was on the lot with a sticker price of $31,125. The pricing report showed me that the dealer would get a $594 holdback from VW corporate. That's money they make irrespective of the price you pay for the car. Every dealer and sales network has this and again, if they tell you they don't, they're lying.
That, combined with a couple of other nuggets of information (like a local $1000 sales incentive - again - money they get just for selling the car) meant I was able to argue the price down to $29,000. IF my dealer paid the normal going rate to VW to get the car on his lot, he only made $568 profit on that vehicle. I got a good deal, the dealer made a profit and was also paid $1,594 from VW in incentives.

A lot of people don't like haggling on prices, especially for something like a car, but you just need to be strong-willed. If they won't come to a price you can accept, walk out. I walked out twice - it took three days to get the price down for me, with a lot of negotiation taking part on email and over the phone. That's another tip - if you can do the deal by email, it's a far better way of working because they can't pressure you and you're not subject to sitting in a showroom full of new car smell.

Of course, if you're armed beforehand with a pricing report and the dealer starts blatantly lying to you, you always have the option of going elsewhere. Gone are the days when the consumer could be treated as a cash cow - dealers need to understand that and treat the buyers with more courtesy and a more grown-up attitude. A lot of them do, but there's still those out there who won't budge from the sticker price and they need to be given a wide berth.

£46bn in tax every year

It's an amazing number, but between road tax, the tax on fuel and the various sales taxes levied on new cars, British drivers pay a total of £46bn every year (source The AA). Divided by the population of the country, it means every man, woman and child pays an average £750 in motoring-related taxes. That's an unfair number because of course not every person in England drives. So if you take the estimated number of drivers (20m) instead of the total population (61.5m), it means every driver pays about £2300 per year in motoring-related taxes. That doesn't include the new 'showroom' tax that was introduced in April this year which adds up to another £515 to the cost of a new car purely in taxes.
For those of us in America, to put that into perspective, it's the equivalent of each of us paying US$3400 in motoring taxes every year.

California wants you to have your own James Bond numberplate

I don't know if you caught this story last week - it did the rounds on some of the tech blogs. California is looking at an idea to issue electronic numberplates that can be changed to show adverts when your car isn't moving. (As if we weren't inundated with adverts on every flat surface already). I'm not sure they've thought this through very well though, because within milliseconds of this technology becoming available, someone will rootkit it and then you'll be able to change your numberplate at will through the resulting hack. Think of the benefits of being able to James-Bond your numberplate! No more speeding tickets from speed cameras. No more fines issued by numberplate recognition cameras. Being able to message the guy behind you that he's a twat. The possibilities are endless.
I'm sure the authorities think they'll be able to come up with a perfectly hack-proof method of creating these electronic numberplates, but then I'm equally sure that nobody involved in this decision process will have been to the DefCon or BlackHat hacker conferences.

Original story from CNN

The Mormon Roadblock

Here in Utah, there's another peculiar local affliction that affects drivers, and we've come to refer to it as the Mormon Roadblock. It's very simple - basically given any number of lanes, you will eventually find yourself stuck behind a mobile roadblock because they just don't like overtaking around here. For example on a 4-lane motorway there will be one driver in each lane, all doing the same speed, each one just slightly over a car length behind the car to their right forming a staggered pattern across all 4 lanes. Nobody will accelerate and overtake, and being today's typical inattentive drivers, none of them will - you know - be considerate and fall back to create a gap. So you're stuck, often for miles on end, following a mobile roadblock because there's no way past.
It's not just motorways - this happens on two-lane roads as well (as in two lanes in each direction). Two drivers, one staggered slightly behind the other, doing the exact same speed.
The longest I've ever been stuck in this situation was last year on a two-lane section of motorway down near Vegas where an old duffer in a Cadillac wouldn't overtake a milk tanker, but instead sat in his blind spot for - wait for it - 25 miles. Eventually the tanker needed to overtake something in the inside lane and just pulled out, forcing the old duffer to react and it cleared the road so the hundreds of cars tailed back behind him could get past.
Once again people - driving mantra. Pay attention - traffic is like a flowing river. When you block it like this, it destroys the flow of traffic.

Also: Don't forget I'm running a competition to win a CarCheckup diagnostic/tracking unit. (Review)

Follow me :-)

A quick break to the normal blog posts. I updated the blog template this week and it seems to have abandoned some of my followers (Silas...?). If you could un-follow and re-follow, all will be well.
Normal service will be resumed with a new motoring blog post on monday :-D